


A Wrench in Clocks

by honeyheffron



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cigarettes, LSD, M/M, Marijuana, Men Crying, Multi, Multiple Beatle Eras, Nostalgia, Period-Typical Homophobia, Polyamory, Recreational Drug Use, but we're back baby, in the words of my dear friend remy: 8 god damn months
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:07:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24464686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyheffron/pseuds/honeyheffron
Summary: Often, George finds himself longing for then. Not much to laugh about these days. Even less to say.Paul, John, George—forth and back, and all the ways they fit together.
Relationships: George Harrison/John Lennon, George Harrison/John Lennon/Paul McCartney, George Harrison/Paul McCartney, John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 24
Kudos: 59





	A Wrench in Clocks

**Author's Note:**

> Title lifted from a line in John Frederick Nims' "Love Poem."
> 
> a MASSIVE thank you to the most amazing beta reader ever, [rufusrant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufusrant/pseuds/rufusrant), who i would likely have never finished this fic without. you're a dream and a wonder, thank you dear friend <33

**I. Now**  
There’s an artfulness to their deception. It’s like painting, George thinks. Choose the color of your lie; choose the brush you’ll use to get it past your teeth; choose the canvas of the person you’d rather forget the shape of.

And, like all art, they are lawless. 

And, like all art, they decay.

They’re working through _Two of Us_ , today, and John and Paul are both lying when they sing _we’re on our way home_ —they’re further from it than they’ve ever been, and rarely look each other in the eye. The lights of Twickenham are a sickening red-orange-green, and the cameras have been rolling-rolling-rolling since they got in this morning; the lenses are like hot irons, looming over shoulders, vile and voyeuristic, and they set George on edge, always, without fail. 

He knows John hates it, too, has smoked enough condoling ciggies with him and gritted out similar variations of contempt whenever Paul’s seen fit to organize another _brilliant_ creative endeavor for the band, like this one. There’s no privacy in it, no dignity. All these wounds they’ve yet to sew up are on full display, and it does nothing but declare to the world just how easily they can make each other bleed.

“He did it on purpose, you know,” John had said to him days ago, between the grimy, tiled walls of the loo down the hall. They’d snuck away for a quick one; they find each other like that, sometimes, just as they find pot or slips of acid, looking for something to fill the void. It’s never like it used to be—John always bites him, rough hands, bruising pace. Sometimes it’s what he needs.

“Did what on purpose?” George had been buttoning up his trousers.

John had leaned forward, then, tried to trace a purple kiss he’d left near his collarbone; George had leaned away, feeling as though it was far too tender a gesture for them. John clicked his tongue, “The cameras, I mean. Keeps him from havin’ to be honest.”

“With us or with them?”

John had only laughed.

George understands so little of him, these days, beyond the fury and the pain, between Yoko and the heroin. Even now, as John looks at him over the mic and rumbles out the harmony under _the road that stretches out ahead_ , George can’t see anything behind his granny glasses.

Paul, beside him, stranger in a strange land, stands similarly obscure. He walks through rich, raging red spatters of pigment in his memory, but here, he’s a blur in George’s periphery, always just out of reach. It’s nauseating, the way he carries on as if it’s all a jive, as if they’ve mislaid nothing, as if he and George and John aren’t tangled up in some miserable web of intemperance and infatuation and dispossession. Buries himself in illusions and evasions.

George stares him down as they play, just to see if he’ll look over, blow a note. He doesn’t. They finish the take with a clang.

Paul finally meets his eye, then, invariably reserved—he clears his throat and says something fussy about the two of them not sounding together. George’s jaw clicks with the clench of his teeth.

He spots Ringo starting to chew restlessly at his fingernails behind his kit. John’s gaze fixes on them both in morbid interest, an inky strand of Yoko’s hair twisted between his fingers.

“It’s complicated now, but see, we can get it simpler,” Paul is saying, “And then complicate it where it needs complications—"

He’s trying to hold his hand again, grinding the bones of his knuckles together in his grip like he’ll wander off into traffic otherwise. _Always_ like George is a child, the same scrawny fourteen year old he looked down his nose at on the bus to the Institute, who isn’t anything without him, can’t ever get it right, isn’t ever good enough.

“It’s not _complicated_ ,” George hisses.

Paul starts a little at the sharpness of his tone, backtracks quickly in that diplomatic way of his, “Well, no, I mean, you know,” stumbles over his words and shifts away from George’s gaze, round eyes growing wider and wetter before they disappear under tired eyelids. _Look at me_ , George wants to say, _I’m not afraid of you._

Paul drags his lip between his teeth. George can tell he’s pulling sentences together in his head and deciding which will upset him least.

There’s a certain satisfaction buried somewhere in his bones at making Paul work at being careful—to be the reason he has to string a considerate thought together before uttering a word. Too many have flown from his mouth at George’s expense. To see him dangling off the cliff’s edge is a fresh measure of madness in all that surrounds them now; one George welcomes more easily than he should.

Paul decides on strumming a few odd chords, speaking over them like it might soften his words, “I’m try’na help you, but I always hear meself _annoying_ you, and I’m try’na—"

George speaks, too, and their voices topple over each other, “You’re not annoying me—”

“I’m not try’na get you. I really am try’na just say, look, lads, the band. And this, you know, it’s like, ‘should we play guitar all through Hey Jude,’ well, I don’t think we should—”

His heart thumps hard against the walls of his chest. For someone who seems so desperate to keep them all together, he has the tremendous, unfailing ability to speak to George like he thinks he’s the one bit of the link they can afford to lose.

He bites out a scathing retort, detached and dismissive in a way he knows Paul loathes. “Well, okay, I don’t mind. I’ll play whatever you want me to play, or I won’t play at all if you don’t want me to play. Whatever it is that’ll please you, I’ll do it.”

And how quickly Paul’s mouth closes. How quickly that perfect flash of agitation presents itself in the darkness of his eye and curls his mouth into an ugly, displeased shape.

John’s the one to laugh—a tiny, sneering huff of air through his nose.

It’s what sets George into motion, floods him with the realization that sitting here and taking it from them both, after everything, is absurd. If nothing else, this is something he has control over: setting his guitar aside, standing up, and walking out, pretending he doesn’t hear Paul call out for him in shades of blue and grey as he slams the door and heads for home.

 **II. Then**  
He is fourteen in Paul’s bedroom at 20 Forthlin Road, and there is something pooling in the press of their thighs at the edge of the mattress. It’s an understated something, but George senses it, feels it in the way they sit and strum together, guitars across their laps like slow winds along the sea. He isn’t sure how to define his indefinable feeling; his scant awareness of it isn’t yet enough to even try.

“ _You know what I want you to say, don't be cruel to a heart that's true_ ,” Paul is singing, a decent imitation of Elvis’ gaudy baritone. George plays along with him, adding tiny ornamentations to the melody wherever can fit them in—Paul grins at him each time, soft and glowing like a faraway star. George’s skin tingles beneath the fabric of his trousers where their knees knock together.

“S’hot in here,” he announces once they’ve finished the number, feeling beads of sweat gather uncomfortably at the nape of his neck. The heat is odd—it’s barely spring. Paul makes some cheeky comment about an ice bath as George reaches back to wipe at the dampness, drags his fingertips across red-flushed skin.

He hears Paul start plucking away at his B string, tuning quietly into the echoes of the room. George rolls his shoulders out and sets his own guitar aside, accompanied solely by the pops and cracks of bones hunched and bent for too long over it. Paul seems to overhear the plight of the body beside him, laughs and whistles low, as if impressed. Before George can attempt some bold retort, Paul stops, strangely glinting eyes fixed acutely on him.

George squirms a little under his gaze, “What? Something in me teeth?”

“You’re leakin’ somewhere, son,” Paul tells him, lightly amused, “Left a red line right here.” He draws a diagonal line across the side of his own neck to demonstrate.

George, curiously, goes to copy the movement, but promptly spots the source of the red at his hand. The tip of his pointer finger has split open, bloody, branching paths gushing forth across his skin like a blotch of wine. Some lone blister had come open from fingerpicking at his guitar strings. (It happened a lot in those days, he remembers. He hadn’t the calluses to protect him yet.)

“Christ,” he murmurs down at the raw mess of his hand, sucks the wound between his teeth and tastes copper. “Stay put,” Paul tells him, and hurries out of the room.

He does, and Paul returns nearly a minute later with a damp dish towel, the one with pale blue stripes George has always seen draped over the McCartney kitchen faucet. There’s a restless spark of his atoms as Paul guides his hand to rest at his lap and begins to clean him up, head ducked and bowed like a flower after rain—soft and careful and perfect, gentle as the breeze, beautiful as youth. He is fourteen, but Paul makes him a poet, wipes him clean and wraps his stinging finger in a cool cloth of relief.

“There you are,” Paul glances up at him, a tiny smile stretched across his lips, a bit of George’s blood on his fingers. George wonders vaguely if he knows what he’s thinking. If, in all his terrible majesty, Paul can read him and know him, too.

“Should I start calling you nurse, then?” George quips, a lame attempt to drive away the tension.

“Sure, if you’re keen on it,” Paul laughs mildly, then adds, with a sad, small smile, “Mam would like it.”

George frowns. It had been two months since Mary—two months of restless nights and frighteningly silent days and Paul’s near-daily visits to the Harrison household. Today is the first time in a long time that he’s been asked over to Paul’s instead. The house is quieter. Jim McCartney’s smile is tighter.

He watches Paul’s shoulders slump forward, almost imperceptibly, watches memory and grief claw their way back to the forefront of his consciousness. George quickly decides _well, that won’t do_ and does the only logical thing a mate would: he carefully unwraps the damp towel from his now scabbing finger, reels his wrist back and smacks Paul’s arm with it. _Thwack._

Paul jumps, wide-eyed and scandalized as he looks back at him, “‘Ey! What—!”

George grins at him, fangy and obnoxious. Paul starts laughing, high and lovely like a bell, grabs a pillow nearby and smacks him with it in retaliation. “Bugger,” he growls, albeit fondly, and then pulls the dripping cloth from George’s own laugh-loosened fingers.

“Give me that, then,” the thin stripes of the towel shake at him in some form of reprimand, “Still a mess on your neck. Hold still.”

He straightens up with a quiver and a jolt as a sodden coolness meets the flesh above his collar. Paul whispers a kindly apology, hot breath blowing across George’s cheek like the promise of a kiss. A pinkie presses absently against his Adam’s apple, shifting and tapping in time with the small, clean swipes of the cloth. In their closeness, there is greed, hunger, fire in his blood—and this is when George _knows._

He laughs again, near soundless, all craving and wanting and loving.

(Often, George finds himself longing for then. Not much to laugh about these days. Even less to say.)

 **III. Now**  
He returns, five days after walking out, on several conditions. He’s called to a long, long meeting out in Surrey, and they speak low and ceremonial throughout, picking up the pieces. They decide to abandon Twickenham for the Apple recording studio on Savile Row—even Paul relents, and agrees they’ll be more comfortable there.

All it fixes, really, is the shadows on the walls. Apple’s barriers dwell in the brightness of white, but the strain remains the same, the games continue to be played, and not one of them is happier for it.

There’s been a sandpapery sort of scratch at the back of George’s throat since Tuesday. He doesn’t think much of it until today, halfway through a take of _For You Blue_ , when his fingers start slipping and his voice starts rasping, weak as a reed. George Martin insists they all ought to take a break and he thinks, bitterly, take a break from _what_ —they’ve not done anything but yawn and play boogie all day.

No sooner than Martin gives the order, Paul is up and out of the room as though his seat has caught fire. John watches him go with a quirk of his brow and strums out an abridged version of _She’s Leaving Home_ on his guitar, belts out the chorus with an extra bit of gusto and camp, habitually acerbic. George offers up an amused smile, hears Ringo’s tiny huff of almost-laughter from behind his kit. Paul doesn’t spare any one of them a glance.

“Alright?” Ringo approaches him as John lights a ciggie in his corner, whispers something to Yoko.

George meets her dark gaze for one fleeting moment and decides he much prefers Ringo’s familiar blue. She breaks away, seeming to decide the same of John’s swimming hazel. “Been better,” George says.

Ringo frowns, “Wouldn’t hurt to go home, would it?”

“What, and miss all this?” He scoffs, with surprising bite. Ringo is silent at that.

He can’t afford to leave, anyway. He knows John or Paul would come up with some brilliant little tune in his absence that would knock his two measly songs right off the bloody album. He would argue, and perhaps they’d hear him, but they wouldn’t listen, and that would be that.

John breaks placidly into Willie Nelson’s _Crazy_ , starts singing daft and dewy and maybe too honestly, “ _I'm crazy, for thinking that my love could hold you…_ ” He’s got stardust and Paul in his eyes, though he leans into Yoko’s thin frame at his side.

George resists a sigh. He supposes the lot of them have always been more capable of truth with guitars in their hands. Easier to hide behind the blues.

Ringo sinks into the wall beside them. He looks like he hasn’t slept. “Fallin’ apart, aren’t we?” He murmurs, rubbing at his eyes.

Numb, George replies, “A right mess.”

John gets through one more melancholy verse before Paul returns, a cup of tea in hand. Hot steam rises and spills from over the rim of the porcelain mug like distant, drifting clouds. George readies to make some disparaging comment about Paul’s apparent urgency for a cuppa, if his abrupt burst of energy leaving the room before was any indication, but then—

But then Paul crosses the room and offers it to him. Warmth between his fingers, pointed in George’s direction.

“For your throat,” he says. Two sparkling sugar cubes float along the top, exactly the way George likes. Even John’s gone quiet.

At a loss, he replies, “Ta,” and his voice creaks like an ancient staircase. He takes the cup from him carefully, feeling as though if he holds too heavily it might disappear.

The bows of Paul’s cheeks are flushed in a way you can only really see up-close, and his gaze is clear and fixed, softhearted and bronze. George allows himself a moment to look back at him, however fast and fading it may be.

Things haven’t always been so unkind. Still aren’t, not always.

 **IV. Then**  
He and Paul hitchhike to Wales when George is sixteen, just as the English winter is beginning to settle in. His mother sews up the holes in their coats before they go, and tells them to look out for each other. George promises he will, feels his chest bloom and glow when Paul tells her something daft and charming like, “Aye, I’ve got him, Louise.”

They aren’t sure exactly where in the Welsh countryside they’ll plant their feet until they come across an old signpost that proudly states HARLECH, in worn, white letters. They’ve heard an old song, _Men of Harlech_ , sometimes slurred and sung in the dark pubs back home—Paul thinks that’s as good a reason as any to pop in. They tell the nice old Englishman behind the wheel that it’ll do, and politely thank him as they climb out and head off, rhythm in their step.

“Cool, isn’t it?” Paul bumps their shoulders together as they walk cobblestone streets, in search of refuge for the night, “Wandering, and all.”

George nods, gazes out over low, worn buildings. Harlech’s got a castle, too, almost lost in the distance on a foggy hill, overlooking the little village. George hasn’t seen something so big and grand in all his life.

“Think they’d let us kip in the castle?” he asks. It startles a laugh out of Paul.

They stumble across a folksy pub in the centre of town, lured in by both the promise of shelter from the cold and a Little Richard song playing somewhere inside. The jukebox nestled in the corner is what marks the little place as their plot of stomping ground for the evening. It’s lively inside, filled from wall to wall with locals, talking, laughing, dancing, drinking. Paul lights up at all the merriment.

“C’mon, then!” As if fraught with lightning, he grabs George’s hand, dances them over to an empty table with a candid sense of joy, feet and arms flailing about. A woman spots them and giggles nearby—George is reminded of the same bright sound mothers make when Liddypool children charm them with capers, sweets between their tiny teeth. Paul winks at her as the tips of George’s ears begin to heat, and she giggles more.

He knocks back a pint as soon as he’s got one in his hands, trying desperately to tamp down the terrible way his hand fizzes with the memory of Paul’s fingerprints.

The Welsh are quite friendly people, they find—they meet a stocky lad called Aneurin at some point in the night, who feeds his coins into the jukebox for just about every Buddy Holly song the thing’s got on it. He’s gruff, talks low, but he loves rock and roll like they do, and for that, they get on well.

“You boys have somewhere t’stay?” Aneurin is asking, looking between them both. The sun is down, and the evening chill is spilling into the pub, unperturbed.

“Not—not yet,” Paul tells him, pleasantly buzzed with drink and swaying a little. George puts a hand between his shoulder blades to steady him, shivers when Paul leans into him. “We’re from up north.”

“Got a spare room back at mine if you’re interested,” he says, “We don’ mind taking tourists in.”

It’s late, and he and Paul are pissed as parrots, so they’ve got no qualms about making agreements. Aneurin’s a sport about it, escorts them back and helps them stay upright when their steps are muddled by the booze. His mother is the one to greet them at the door and take them to their room upstairs, a stout, pleasant woman who offers them extra blankets and bids them a friendly goodnight. Paul kicks off his boots and flops gracelessly onto the Dunlopillo before them as soon as she closes the door.

“Ought never to say a nasty thing about the Welsh,” Paul says sagely, “Or their beds.”

“Comfortable, then?” George grins, “Shove over.” He grabs one of the plush pillows along the headboard and tosses it toward the bottom end, following suit and stepping out of his shoes.

Paul blinks up at him, then studies the pillow he’s moved, dubious. “What are you doing?”

He follows the path of his eye and replies dryly, “Well, usually need one of those to sleep.”

“No, I mean—what, like top-and-tailing it? C’mon, Georgie, s’too cold for that.”

George stares.

“Jus’ come up here,” Paul pats the spot beside him, his eyelids drooping low with the day’s fatigues, “Warmer.”

He thinks about asking Paul if he’s sure, but he knows any spoken apprehension would betray him—something would inevitably come tumbling out of his mouth, something that would ruin everything, all too real, too aching. Under the weight of George’s abyssal introspection, Paul already looks like he’s about to recant his offer and smooth over the rough edges of their suddenly stunted conversation, and so George moves, quickly, sets the pillow back where he found it and climbs under the fraying quilt.

“Are you…” Paul begins, but slips into silence as the words peter out, an incomplete thought.

“S’fine,” George says, steadily, though he hasn’t a clue what Paul was going to say.

Paul’s expression is indecipherable as he flicks off the light.

The bedding crinkles and shifts about as they settle in—George is careful, positions himself in such a way that skin cannot touch, that he cannot be tempted into satisfaction. They lay agonizingly close, facing one another, but he is quick to shut his eyes, consummate veils of secrecy.

“Tired?” Paul’s voice is just above a whisper.

George hums noncommittally. A burst of warm air sweeps over his chin as Paul laughs. His toes curl helplessly. “M’not.”

“Never are,” George gibes, cracks an eye open.

He stays, a moment, studying the heat pouring between the two of them, the soft beams of pearly moonlight along the angles of Paul’s features, the measured rise and fall of their breath. Paul’s amber gaze finds his, crinkled around the edges.

“S’nice, this,” he murmurs, “Looking at you.”

It hangs in the air like Heaven around. George swallows hard.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” His words come out thin, fragile.

“Jus’ what I said,” Paul grins now, a sort of drunken bend to it. George feels his foot slip under his calf sportively, hisses at the icy press of Paul’s toes and tries to retreat.

“Since when do you say—say things like that to me?”

Paul’s face goes quietly thoughtful, a weary brow furrowed.

“I don’t know.”

His pinkie suddenly wiggles where it rests, parallel to George’s own hand, then stretches, as if reaching for something—someone, he realizes breathlessly, as it extends further to smooth, featherlike, across the lines of his palm. It slides within the space between George’s last two fingers, hooks and curls forward so that their pinkies are irrefutably entangled, like rose vines.

“I don’t know,” he breathes, heady like liquor, “Do you?”

There’s a spot of moisture gathered in the curve of his pink lower lip, glossy in the brilliancy of the stars. Should this be a conversation—a physical dialogue of their own, Paul’s question posed—George chooses to make a trembling reply.

He slips his free hand from beneath the sheets and reaches out. His finger drags lazily along the pink, catches the dew, and stops there as Paul’s mouth forms a kiss.

All of George’s breath leaves him at once.

“You _bastard_ ,” he says, though it’s so fond, so mild, so feeling, mourning all the time they’ve wasted.

Paul’s smile is wide.

“Didn’t know.”

“You should’ve said.”

And then Paul’s mouth seizes his like he’s won a prize, and really, that’s all it takes.

He tastes of ale from the pub and the piece of mint gum George had given him on their walk back, hot and cold all at once—his kiss is wide and wet and hungry and wanting, and Paul is so sweet with him, runs his lovely fingers up along George’s ribcage like smoothing out an unruly bit of clay. It’s a kind of healing, the way they move, the way George gets worked up enough to start biting, the way Paul hums into his mouth like it’s good, even better than good.

George yanks him impossibly closer, revels in Paul’s proud grin as he swings a leg over him, bracketing thin hips. He pulls harder at the cotton shirt crumpled between his fingers for the sheer carnality of it, how they fit together, and Paul’s sudden desperation to curl around him and devour, dismantle every bit of him that he can reach. Some muffled curse lands at the corner of George’s mouth, nearly a growl, and then Paul’s hips dig forward into him and oh, _Christ_ —

His embarrassingly loud moan escapes him at the exact moment they both recall that they are not, in fact, alone in this house, and that the delightful Welsh folks who’ve taken them in for the night have likely just heard his unmistakably orgasmic cry to the heavens. They freeze, blood like ice, and Paul reflexively slaps his hand over George’s mouth, as if the damage hasn’t already been done.

They sit still as church mice, wide-eyed stares matching one another, panic for panic, and fix their ears to the sounds of the place, listening for any odd footstep, knock, or whisper, any movement down the hall. George spares a glance at the window to their right. They’re on the second floor, but the height isn’t colossal, so if they had to jump out, he supposes it wouldn’t kill them. He toys with the idea of maybe just throwing himself out of it anyway, on account of this being, inarguably, the worst moment of his life.

It’s another minute before Paul seems to relax, and so George does too, thanks his lucky stars when no one comes running. God save the Welsh, truly.

“Jesus H. _bleeding_ Christ,” Paul whispers, and then creases up into hysterical, barely suppressed laughter.

George swings out a hand to whack him with, which Paul dodges craftily, so he sticks his tongue out and licks a clean line across the hand still clamped over his mouth. Paul recoils with a grimace and smushes George’s face into the pillow, climbing off of him with a huff of, “That’s disgusting.”

“That’s disgusting?” George turns to him, “We were swapping spit like a couple of queers jus’ now and _that’s_ disgusting?”

There’s a decidedly tense pause, and Paul makes a small, morose scoffing sound, shifting away. George knows, painfully, that he’s gone and stuck his foot in his mouth again.

“Sorry,” he tries, “Didn’t mean it like that.”

“Regretting it, are you?”

“No,” George says, quickly, resolutely, “Not even a little.”

Paul kisses him again, and it’s softer now, almost worshipful. “You’re somethin’, son,” he tells him, in a voice like the music of summer, and George comes alive under his warmth.

 **V. Now**  
It’s someone’s idea that they should hold a concert on the roof, to finish off the film. George thinks it’s terrible—thinks the idea of a live show _at all_ is terrible, because what if they’re _shit?_ What if they can’t keep it together when they get out there? Playing in the studio is one thing, but doing it in front of hundreds of people down on the street after going _three years_ without a single live performance to speak of is entirely another.

Regardless, John and Paul both seem to think it’s a marvelous plan, and even Ringo seems enthused. George is left with a choice; they wouldn’t make him do it, he knows, not if he really refused them. It’s the fighting he can’t stand.

Ringo, like always, seems somehow to know what’s on his mind. They cross paths in the corridor on a break.

“You don’t have to do it for them,” he says. “You don’t have to do anything for them.”

George’s mouth presses into a hard line. “Don’t I?”

“You don’t,” Ringo’s resolute, “It’s none of my business what’s gone on between you, and I’m not saying this to stir anything up, mind you. But you’ve a right to what you feel.”

“Christ, I don’t know. Every hour here feels like days, you know, and they...” George makes a vague gesture with his hand. Ringo merely nods.

“Pick your battles, then. If this is one of them, I’ll back you up, but you’re the one who’s got to make the push.”

He’s dulled with the idea of pushing. And, more than that, the last thing he wants is to pull Ringo in along with him. It’s not an easy choice, agreeing to the gig, but it’s a simple one.

On the day, after all the rehearsing and anxious nights, they get stuck in the small vestibule at the top of the stairs. Their feet seem fixed to the floor—it’s nerves, exactly like it was in the old days of touring, the kind that make them all so uptight and fatalistic.

“Don’t want to do it,” George is mumbling, and Paul’s eyes are wide on him, almost pleading.

Ringo adds, faithfully, “Don’t see much point in this, really.”

“It’s always like this, you know,” Paul tries, a little desperate, “Walking out there’s always the hardest bit, but it’ll be just fine after we do. Always is.”

There’s silence; George isn’t budging, but Paul doesn’t seem to be, either. It’s another fire starting, red-ribbon flames licking at their ankles, the beginnings of disaster.

John’s hand then finds George’s wrist—long fingers wrap around its bend; his thumb finds the pulse point and presses _down_. He flinches, but it grounds him, yanks him back into their orbit, stops his mind from racing by. There’s a sort of conviction in John’s eyes that gleans no argument. He flares, “Oh, fuck it—let’s do it.”

Paul’s smile is warm and half-bitten as he pushes the door open.

 **VI. Then**  
Hamburg is when the lines begin to blur, if they’d ever been drawn at all. George has his first girl (in a creaking top bunk, red lips and soft thighs, a buxom dancer, and they all cheer and clap for him like loons afterwards), and his first boy (in a room he can’t remember, hot mouth and needy hands, Paul, perfect and everywhere—George spilling into his fist, white-hot and trembling, clinging, somehow never able to catch his breath.)

Hamburg is also when _John &Paul_ bleeds in.

George knew there was something there long before they ever made it to Germany, of course. It’s obvious to anyone, the spark between them, the propinquity of souls. They’re designed for one another, and, simply put, their pieces fit together differently than his and Paul’s do. He knows this.

“You’ve got it for him,” George says one day, when John’s left for the toilets, “I know you have.”

“What are you on about?” Paul asks, darting his eyes about the room. The Prellies make him buzz like a wind-up toy.

“John. You think about him.”

“Well, it’s—he’s a mate,” he coughs.

“But you’d like more.”

“What does it matter?” Paul snaps, and George knows he has him. “It’s like with a bird, you know. I’ve got you, haven’t I?” an uneasy twitch of his hands, “Wouldn’t be fair.”

George hums, low and meaningful, a smirk playing at the corner of his lips, “M’not a bird, Paul.”

Paul blinks, steps into his space, then, comes between his legs where he’s sitting on top of one of the amps. There’s a glistening, childlike question of assurance in his eyes—George nods a yes, because he’s never been able to say no to Paul, and the idea of sharing him doesn’t bother him quite so much as he thinks it ought to.

Somehow, he feels that perhaps he’s caught up with something. He may have been first, but Paul would lean into John, one way or another. George can still have him, this way.

Paul bends down to steal a kiss, softer than they’ve been of late. There’s gratitude enough, something like relief, and it twists his stomach in knots.

A night or two thereafter, John finds him, snakes a possessive arm around his waist and pulls him into backstage shadows—he presses a wet, warm kiss to the sweaty line of his jaw and murmurs, “From him, to me, to you.” ( _with love, from me to you_ becomes a lyric later, and it’s almost like a secret.)

 **VII. Now**  
It’s three weeks since they’ve wrapped the Get Back sessions, and Ringo’s in the hospital.

Stomach pains, he’d said. He’d been having them off and on over the last month. George had been the one to drive him down to the A&E after Ringo had called to explain he was in too much pain to drive himself. Poor lad looked miserable the whole way there, and George couldn’t do anything but step on the gas and try to breathe.

“They’re just runnin’ tests, Georgie,” he’d said over the phone this morning, sounding perhaps a little heartier than the night before, “Don’t worry about me.”

George wonders vaguely if there’s ever been a time he hasn’t worried about Ringo, but nonetheless offers up some word of flimsy assurance to oblige him.

They’re meant to have a meeting at Savile Row today to discuss the next album—Paul insisted on it, and the lot of them couldn’t be bothered to craft any excuses for not attending, so they agreed. Ringo tells him he’s already called John and Paul to let them know he won’t be there, and George’s realization of this fact is something hard to swallow.

It’s a precarious thing to stick the three of them in a room together without Ringo. He’s their one real buffer, their unspoken mediator, the closest thing they have to a neutral party in all that lies between them. Without him, they’re unchecked, and bound to go stomping all over each other’s feelings.

Regardless, George finds himself waiting alone in one of the Apple conference rooms, nervous leg bobbing rapidly beneath the cold mahogany of the table. Dread sits in the pit of his stomach, heavy as stone, and he’s not sure how he convinced himself to show up here at all. The inevitable, maybe—a feeling he can’t escape.

Soon enough, the door to his right opens with a soft click, and Paul steps through.

What George first notices is that the massive beard he’d been sporting since the New Year is gone. Reduced now to a meager bit of stubble, he looks cleaner, lighter. His hair looks as though it’s been trimmed up, too—still long, but where it had often been pushed back before, it comes down now to frame his features in stylish, feathered waves.

His walk is confident as he takes the chair across from George, head high, gaze sure. That old quality of subtle haughtiness is back, as if he’s had the time to rebuild himself after all the tearing-down they’d done to one another through the last sessions. His presence holds more command than it has in months. The whole thing leaves a nasty taste in George’s mouth.

“Cleaned up, have you?” George murmurs, hates the way he nearly can’t bring himself to match his stare and hold his own.

“Felt like it was time for a change,” he says, and then, almost hesitantly, “Not bad, is it?”

“You know how you look,” George tells him, and slides a palm against his cheek to keep the rising heat away. Paul looks pleased at that.

He asks, “How’s Ritch?”

George shrugs, brow furrowed, “Better, far as I know. Didn’t you speak with him?”

“Sure, but I’m not sure I understood a lot of what he was telling me. He can be very vague about these things, you know.”

“Doesn’t want us to worry.”

Paul scoffs, “Well, he’s ours. Can’t help worrying.”

 _Ours_. George is sure Paul doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.

John appears, then, the door swinging open much wider, less careful than Paul had been. Curious eyes fix on him as he slides into the seat next to George.

“See you’ve finally tamed that thing growin’ out of your mug.”

Paul’s mouth twitches. “Was getting unruly.”

“And you like your rules,” John derides, offhandedly. Paul’s expression remains meticulously aloof, but George knows everything he says cuts him somewhere deep and raw.

John, either oblivious or indifferent to that bit of knowledge, starts reaching into his bag. He pulls out a sleek shoebox cassette tape recorder and slides it toward the center of the table. “Thought we could record everything for Ring,” he explains, “Make it easier.”

“That’s good,” Paul nods. George voices similar approval, and so John reaches over to press down on the blocky record button.

“Ringo,” he says into the air, “You can’t be here, but this is so you can hear what we’re discussing.”

There’s a pause before John begins again, “One thing we ought to get straight is writing credits.”

George cocks a brow. He wasn’t aware of any kind of dissatisfaction there—they’d figured out the details of song quotas and whose-name-gets-stuck-to-what years ago, the immovable law. Paul looks similarly apprehensive, wringing his hands as though he can sense an oncoming storm.

“How d’you mean?”

“Well, it’s not as if things haven’t changed,” John plows on, “But what hasn’t is the way we go on promoting this Lennon-and-McCartney myth.”

“Myth,” Paul repeats. George doesn’t know what to make of his tone—sorrow, exasperation, something carefully guarded. He shifts his weight from one arm to the other along the tabletop, and, to his credit, doesn’t shy away under John’s scrutiny, keeps his gaze firmly head-on, stubborn as he’s always been.

“Myth,” John echoes, venom dripping from every consonant, “We’re not writing bloody Love Me Do anymore, are we? Individual credit’s more of the truth, these days.”

“That’s fine, John,” Paul’s voice is pointed, as if fighting to be the final note of this conversation, “That’s all fine.”

They all know, somewhere, that the matter’s got nothing to do with truth. This is about John and Paul, the wedge they’ve driven between themselves, the resentment they’ve cultivated over lost time and misunderstandings. Truth has nothing to do with it. They’re the least truthful people George knows, and no more than when they’ve got to face each other.

John pulls out his pack of ciggies, slips one between his lips. Paul watches him warily.

“How do you plan to split that up, then? Six songs each, with George’s two?”

“Four each,” John is almost smug, “And four for George. Ringo with two, if he wants them.”

George isn’t exactly sure if it’s shock that takes him, but as John gives him a sideways glance there’s a distinct cold-rush of electricity through his bloodstream. John holds out his pack of Kools like an offering, and there’s a smirk there, too, as George takes one, something brief and potent passing between them. An exclusivity Paul isn’t privy to, for once.

John leans forward to light the ciggie for him, Zippo clicking in his left hand—his right comes up to brush the hair from George’s face, to keep it away from the flame, white lighting rising as his middle finger grazes the curve of his cheek. It’s dizzyingly intimate, another one of John’s games, and he doesn’t need to look to know Paul is seething quietly across from them.

John retreats with a languid grin. They know perfectly well what they’re doing.

“I thought, until this album,” Paul appears composed, but there’s sordid grit within, “That George’s songs weren’t that good.”

George could laugh, really. It’s the most unbelievably, irritatingly backhanded compliment he thinks he’s ever heard, and it’s exactly the truth of him—Paul’s just as brutal and catty as the rest of them, only he’ll dress it up in fake morals and diplomacy before you ever catch a whiff of it.

“That’s a matter of taste,” he spits, “All down the line, people have liked my songs.”

“Nobody else in the group dug your idea to make another fucking Beatle movie,” John cuts in, “Your colored lights, people filming us all the time. Nobody was in it at all. You’d sit back and give your last gasps while the rest of us shook out whatever tunes you fancied.”

“I didn’t want it to be like that. You know I didn’t.”

“Though it’s funny how it’s more often about what _you_ want, isn’t it?” George blows out a bitter puff of ciggie smoke.

Paul speaks slowly, on the edge of something, “You both act as though I don’t have to call you and beg you to show up to the studio each day to finish even half a bloody lyric.”

“Aye,” John looks deadly, “Call us up for other things, too, don’t you?”

“Oh, _Christ_.”

“Do me one and I’ll do _you _, lover—”__

__“John!” Paul finally roars, and the room falls silent._ _

__John’s made a cheap shot; he must know it, too, as he doesn’t dare to shout back. George feels the sting of it._ _

__Paul looks between them both like he can’t believe the way it’s all turned out. His hardened gaze then lands ruefully on the cassette tape recorder, sitting forgotten in the middle of the table._ _

__“Sorry, Ringo,” he says, quiet as a prayer, and clicks it off. They never do give him the tape._ _

__**VIII. Then**  
He’s rooming with John, one bleary night of their first American tour, when he’s startled awake by a sharp kick to his shin._ _

__“Fucking ‘ell,” he croaks out, hoarse with sleep. The tiny clock nearby tells him it’s just past two in the morning. “What is it?”_ _

__John doesn’t answer, so he rolls over to get a look at him. He’s asleep, still, though his brows seem to draw together periodically, eerie and ill at ease. George squints over at him in the dark. He doesn’t know what to make of it—he thinks maybe it’s just some product of John’s usual waking-world restlessness leaking into his dreams. Odd, sure, but not unheard of._ _

__He decides he’ll ask about it when they’re up in a few hours, if only to ensure his shins’ safety the next time they share a bed. He settles in again, almost slips back into slumber—and then John’s head suddenly whips to the side as though he’s been belted._ _

__It blows George’s sleepy fog away and steadfastly replaces it with alarm. He props himself up on his elbows as John’s breathing becomes stifled and wobbling, chest tightening up like a bow-string. He grunts into the starchy cotton of his pillow, a horrible, broken sound, and George shoves helplessly at his shoulder._ _

__“John,” he says, “Hey, s’alright.”_ _

__He grunts again, and this time it’s something like a wail, weak and pitiable in a way he’s never associated with John, fearless leader, tough as anything. Paul’s usually the one to handle these things, the things they don’t talk about but always hold each other through, and George stumbles, now, thrust into a role that’s not his. He shakes him again, growing frantic, “John, _wake up_.”_ _

__Another jostle and it’s enough; John stirs with a full-body tremor, eyes wild as a war dance. George is quick to sit up and tug the light on, but John doesn’t move, just fists his hands into the sheets and tries to catch his breath._ _

__“Okay?” he keeps his voice low, so as not to startle him, but gets no response. He fidgets, feeling utterly inadequate as John’s jagged breaths fill the space between them—George didn’t even know he dealt with nightmares, and never so bad as all this._ _

__It’s a suffocating feeling, and he can’t stand how small and frightened John looks, so he reaches out, slowly. He thinks fondly of what his mother would do on gloomy nights like this one when he was a lad, guides his fingers to trace avenues through auburn, delicate and easing. He sinks into it when John doesn’t pull away. With each brush, his eyelids flutter like butterfly wings._ _

__He pets his hair awhile like that, grateful as his breathing slows, as fear finally dissipates. John shrugs him off eventually, if only so he can sit up properly._ _

__George clears his throat, “You wan’ something from the tap?”_ _

__“No,” sweat glistens along John’s brow. “Jus’ stay.”_ _

__He shuffles infinitesimally closer, and George takes the hint, scoots in so that their shoulders bump together. He makes the first move, as he always does, hooks their ankles over one another, and John sighs, wraps his arms around George’s middle, buries himself somewhere safe between his neck and shoulder._ _

__“What were you dreaming about?”_ _

__“Nothin’ you’d want to hear.”_ _

George frowns, but doesn’t push it. There are certain words they avoid, and with Paul, too— _mother, love, us_ —lines they haven’t crossed yet. As John knocks his chin and seizes his lips, George thinks it’s really only a matter of time.

 **IX. Now**  
Ringo, thankfully, recovers quickly from his intestinal scare, and they’re back in the studio just a few days later. The new album starts coming together well; George is still only allowed two songs on it, but they’re _good_ —he knows they are, John and Paul know they are, and he likes the way he stands a little taller for it.

__Ringo’s off bumming a smoke from one of the engineers, and George is left beside John now, hunched over on the piano bench. He’s unaccompanied today, as Yoko’s stayed home sick. He says she insisted he come into the studio anyway, which, he points out, is the only reason he’s here._ _

They’re watching Paul get ready to do a few warmup vocal takes across the room. He’s talking with Martin about his _Oh! Darling_ , mapping out how he wants it to sound, unremitting as ever. They’ve laid down a rough instrumental track already, all bluesy piano and sobbing guitar, and he and John try not to look too hard at the lyrics—there’s an ache and a longing there far too fresh to entertain.

“ _Oh, darling, please believe me, I’ll never do you no harm…_ ” It’s almost an apology, and Paul’s always written what he’s felt, whether he knows it or not. And they’d never say it aloud, but it wrests something dewy-eyed from them both, reopens doors, pokes holes in weak spots and leaves things spilling out quietly. Sentimental, dangerous, honest things.

__Without warning, John tells him, “I didn't mean what I said. Back during that meeting, you know.”_ _

__It’s unclear if it's for George's benefit or his own. That debacle in the conference room was nearly three weeks ago—clearly, it’s weighed heavy on him, if he’s seen fit to bring it up again. George supposes he isn’t all that surprised. John’s tongue has always been crueler than the rest of him, quicker to lash out._ _

__He continues carefully, “He's never gone...asking for favors like that, or whatever I said.”_ _

__George nods his head toward Paul, “Shouldn't you be telling him all this?”_ _

“I won’t, though,” John murmurs, and there’s some awful, bleak acceptance in it, like it can’t be helped, like it’s all out of their control, now. Which it _isn’t_. George knows it isn’t, and he’s suddenly _furious_ that John flatly refuses to see it, or to do anything about it. If it were the two of them fighting for this thing, they might have a chance, but John’s fucked off with Yoko and left them out in the cold, so what are they meant to do now?

__“I don’t know what you want, then, John,” George fumes, sharp as a steel trap._ _

__He sneers, “No, you don’t.”_ _

__“You’re a bastard.”_ _

__“Yeah,” John shrugs, “And you’re lonely.”_ _

Paul begins to croon into the faraway mic, “ _Oh, darling…_ ”

__**X. Then**  
Their first time is in the Bahamas—their first time all together, that is—lights on, moon high in the sky, and all the time in the world._ _

__John shows up to his and Paul’s room with a bottle of scarlet wine. He smells of sea salt, a pleasant remnant of the bit of the film they’d shot on the beach this morning. The evening humidity makes the tips of his hair curl with moisture, and he looks fair and misty as a daydream._ _

__“Come bearing gifts, have you?” George grins in the doorway._ _

__“Treasure for my treasures,” John waggles the bottle, “Or somethin’ like that.”_ _

__“Soft lad,” Paul laughs from inside. George steps aside to let him in._ _

__They drink and smoke until a subtle sort of static engulfs the room, sat on the bed, wine drunk and far too warm. He’s not entirely sure what starts it—John’s hand tracing nonsense patterns across Paul’s knee, George’s fingers running in long, lazy paths at the nape of John’s neck, Paul’s eyes black-dark and glistening as he looks between them both. They talk over every touch, as if their wall of sound might disguise the desire._ _

__George, always bold, is the one to disrupt the dance; Paul’s wine-rouged lips are mid-sentence when he finally leans over to capture them, needing, and Paul responds in kind, eager and willing. John’s quiet, titillated hum beside them is like music._ _

__“C’mere, Johnny,” Paul whispers as they soon break apart, pecking the tip of George’s nose once more for good measure. John moves in with a heavy hunger. They shift together like waves, crashing, wet and weaving, nature’s sublimity. Kisses become a form of worship; Paul’s reverence outlined in the stroke of his thumb at John’s jaw, the gentle caress of his mouth, and John, rejoicing in their shared breath, the thrill of being wanted._ _

__George doesn’t pretend to understand the way his belly pools with heat, watching them. It’s strange, he knows, to want so much from them both, and stranger still to know they’d give it to him, easily, madly. He finds himself reaching out, a little desperate, one hand landing somewhere along Paul’s calf, and the other at the bend of John’s shoulder, who grins when it lands._ _

__As he pulls softly away from Paul, he studies George naughtily, leans into him like a magnet._ _

__“Yeah?” John’s voice drops to a purr, and his hand finds its way up the back of George’s t-shirt, pulls him in greedily to a heated sort of half-embrace. He nuzzles into his neck and inhales deeply, planting lingering kisses at every available expanse of skin. A carnal sound trapped somewhere in the back of George’s throat makes its way out into the space between them, Paul moves to begin undoing the buttons of his own shirt, and off they are, chasing each other further than they’ve yet dared._ _

__They talk and rib each other a lot of the way through it. They have to. Like all things, they bury fear and discomfort with Beatle bravado, sureness of step to drive each other forward. George decides he wants to try something new, and somewhere in all the kiss-and-touch he opens his legs daintily like he’s only ever seen birds do. He kicks John hard when he laughs at him._ _

__“You want…?” Paul’s situated between his legs, brows raised. George nods, flushed all over._ _

__“Fuck,” John grunts, all hot, whetted breath._ _

From what Eppy’s divulged and what they’ve heard in dark corners of dark nightclubs, it’s best to start with fingers. Paul’s are long and thin, coated in Vaseline, and it’s an odd burn as they push in, up, stretching. John’s hands smooth down his thighs to keep him from squirming so much. They make it to a third, by which point George is a writhing, panting mess, Paul’s fingers having found a wondrous spot inside that sets his whole being ablaze every time he presses up against it. Paul smirks like a devil when he seems to put two and two together, starts curving each digit _just right_ so he can selfishly drink in every consequent cry and quiver. John is no help, either, teasing and mouthing everywhere but where they both need him most, and finally George whines, “Get on with it, Christ, m’not gonna last.”

And when they tangle up together, laid bare in search of absolution, Paul sinks into him like a dream, easy rhythm, rich melody. A broad hand kneads at the ivory expanse of George’s outer thigh as they move, squeezing desperately when it’s all too much and not enough. He reaches for John, stroking blindly, delighting in the string of helpless little moans it earns him. His other hand comes to tangle in Paul’s sweat-soaked hair, scratching, pulling, and he whines into his mouth _please please please_ , and it’s the only time he ever begs, begging to be begged, and Paul meets him, matches him, gives to him.

__John rolls impossibly nearer—Paul taps at George’s hand where it’s wrapped around him, and he obeys, pulling off in favor of dragging him into a spit-slick kiss. John keens into his mouth as Paul’s strokes replace his own, and he starts to rut against George’s side like an animal, rapidly coming undone._ _

John gets a hand around him, then, tugging in perfect time with Paul’s thrusts. His grin as George arches up off the bed, overcome under all the attention, is nothing short of obscene, but it’s Paul’s aching gasp of, “Oh, _fuck_ ,” that does him in.

__He goes over the edge on a silent cry, eyes shut tight, shaking all over, and the force of it leaves his limbs jellylike and tingling. John follows soon after with some frenzied string of nonsense syllables, biting into George’s shoulder hard enough to bruise. It takes Paul a minute more, but he fucks George through it, falls apart with the spine-tingling clenching and unclenching of the body beneath him._ _

__They lay awhile like that, a snug pile of naked limbs and perspiration, no words above a whisper. George nudges Paul, eventually, where he’s collapsed on top of him. “Geroff, then, you’re sticky.”_ _

__Paul huffs, but complies, sliding off into the middle of their cluster. “Ever the romantic.”_ _

__John reaches for the box of tissues sat on the nightstand, pulling one out to clean himself up with and then tossing the box vaguely in their direction. It smacks Paul square in the face, and he half-heartedly laments, “Ow.”_ _

__“Sorry,” John snorts, pressing a conciliatory kiss to his forehead. George tosses the box to the floor once they’ve wiped themselves down properly, then pulls the bedspread over their compact huddle. It’s a bit of a tight fit, the three of them curled up in a queen bed, but their seemingly innate closeness helps some._ _

__Just as Paul’s fingers begin their clever journey along the paths of his scalp, George dares to murmur, “That was good. We’re good. You know, together.”_ _

__He hopes they understand what he’s getting at; judging by the frightening stretch of silence that commandeers the room as the words settle in, it seems they do._ _

__Mercifully, Paul speaks. “S’ a good word, that. Together.”_ _

“A _great_ word,” John agrees, like he’s been freed, and pulls them ever closer.

__**XI. Now**  
“Hello?”_ _

__George picks up the phone in his rumpled nightclothes, one groggy eye squinted shut against the oppressive yellow light of the corridor. The tile is cold beneath his feet._ _

__He supposes he could’ve just let it ring and gone back to bed, but something inscrutable seemed to draw him toward the receiver. Call it intuition._ _

__“George?”_ _

__Paul’s voice is sleep-mush and tinny on the other end of the line. Something inside of him warms up._ _

__“Yeah,” he swallows, “S’me.”_ _

__“How…how are you?”_ _

__It’s a pitiful thing—almost laughable. That Paul clings to formalities even in times like these. Perhaps it’s more pitiful that George finds it a comfort._ _

__“Fine,” he plays along, “A little tired. And yourself?”_ _

__“Fine, y’know.”_ _

__George takes a breath._ _

__“Did John not pick up, then?”_ _

__“What’s that?”_ _

__“John. You’ve rung me because he didn’t answer?”_ _

__“Oh, no. He never answers. And anyway, it’s not like that. I didn’t ring him. Jus’ you.”_ _

_Jus’ you_. George isn’t sure what the script’s supposed to be, here. Paul rarely calls him, never at such an odd hour, and always to prattle on about whatever work needs to be done in the studio. This is decidedly different.

__“What’s this about, then?”_ _

__“Don’t know, really,” he says in that imprecise, lofty artist way of his, “You can hang up, course. Sorry if I woke you.”_ _

__“No,” George lies, though he doesn’t know why, “Was already up. Couldn’t sleep.”_ _

__Paul hums, “Me neither.” Then, “Can I ask you something?”_ _

__“Jus’ did.”_ _

__He laughs, soft and amiable, and it tugs painfully at something in George’s chest._ _

__“I have this, sort of, feeling,” Paul begins, “I can’t rightly explain it.”_ _

__“A bad feeling?”_ _

__“Yeah. It’s like—I don’t know, like an instinct. Doesn’t all this feel wrong to you? Like we’re making some massive mistake over each other? Like there’s more to be done, and we’re missin’ it?”_ _

__George can’t help but roll his eyes. So that’s what this is about. Another underhanded attempt to keep them all detained in the madhouse, cranking out Beatle tunes until they’re eighty. Best not upset the Apple cart, as it were._ _

__“It’s a bit late to be trying to hold the band together now—”_ _

__“I’m not talking about the band, George.”_ _

__His heart stutters like a scratched record._ _

__He’d stopped entertaining hope so long ago. They’d quit each other; Paul threw himself into work, John found someone else, and George swore all of it off like a bad habit. And now Paul’s gone raising the dead at bloody three in the morning._ _

__There’s a horrible lump in his throat as he gets out, “I think maybe it’s a bit late for that, too.”_ _

__“Maybe,” Paul concedes mildly, “But some of it was good, right?”_ _

__“Some of it,” his lip quirks, and the lump grows, “Yeah.”_ _

__**XII. Then**  
Lysergic changes everything._ _

__The first time he and John take it, they don’t know they’ve had it. They’re at dinner with George’s dentist and the big bastard slips it into their coffee. It’s like a horror film, once he tells them what he’s done, like an orchestra shrieking over and around them, a cacophonous warning of what’s to come. He keeps saying to them, “I advise you not to leave, I advise you not to leave,” but neither one of them listen, caught somewhere between rage and mistrust. They hightail it out of there in George’s Mini._ _

__They wander off to a nightclub, naïve as they are, thinking it’s the sort of thing they might shake off with enough booze and music to dilute it—by then, they’re in hysterics. Cackling in the streets, grasping at each other’s shirt sleeves like squeezing clumps of sand together in their palms. John steals a kiss somewhere, and his tongue feels like velvet._ _

__A tiny red light blinks on in the lift up to the club, and they go mad with fright, screaming like it’s the end of everything, thinking they’ve caught fire. They haven’t, of course, but they take big, gulping breaths when the doors finally open once more, hoarse and stumbling over to a table that seems to stretch forever. George thinks he finally knows God, as the leather of his seat sticks to his skin, starts to see Him in every color, every atom. John keeps pulling at pieces of George’s hair, his eyes everywhere, whispering, “Can you see it? Look at that.”_ _

__They run around like that all night. When they get back to George’s home in Esher, they make love on the massive wool rug in the front room, and over and over again they sigh, “you, you, you,” a languid, love-bled mantra, paisley shapes all around._ _

__It’s a mammoth experience, every hour indescribable. For weeks afterward, George feels as if John is the only one to ever know him, just by the look in his eye. Paul senses the shift in them almost immediately._ _

__When they tell him what they’ve done, his brows draw low, and his mouth tightens up like a fist. (George thought he was angry with them, at the time, but in hindsight, he thinks it might’ve been dread.)_ _

__“You and Ringo have to have it,” John tells him._ _

__He and George have discussed this at length already; it’s all too important to them that this becomes a shared experience. They’ve found it’s become increasingly difficult to connect with people who haven’t dropped, like speaking a language only a number of people can understand, and they want Paul and Ringo to be part of it. It seems only a logical step for the band—something to propel them forward. A rebirth._ _

“What you’ll _see_ ,” John goes on, “It’s important.”

__“Is it?” Paul scratches at his cheek, “Sounds to me like getting lost and burning the map home.”_ _

__There’s a bit of conceit in him, some slight lick of motherly disapproval as he speaks. George huffs, “You could stand to get a bit lost.”_ _

__Paul frowns, fixes him with a look. “Right, okay. I’m happy it’s done something for you both, but I don’t—it’s not for me, I don’t think. Not now.”_ _

__For what it means to them, his refusal cuts a wound of another kind. Another needle poised at the curve of the ever-expanding Beatle bubble._ _

__The second time is in Los Angeles, somewhere in the whirlwind summer of their second US tour, at a palatial home they’ve rented from Zsa Zsa Gabor. There are other people mulling about, this time, actors, artists, musicians, anyone looking to catch a piece of them. Ringo takes it with them, too, because he says he’ll take anything. Paul declines again, though he phases in and out of mingling with their small gathering of drunken guests to keep a watchful eye._ _

__George’s trip, this time, is far less kind than his last._ _

__It starts out fine. He’s overcome with the same sensation of wholeness and humanity as the first time, trembling with abstractions. He goes to sit and stick his bare feet into the pool outside, and the water feels like nothing he’s ever felt before, a pinprick coolness over the fizz of his nerve endings. There’s low chatter all around, people he doesn’t recognize and people he does. John and Ringo are lounging nearby—Ringo’s got his hands over his eyes, and George thinks he sees flowers across his knuckles, pale white, imprinted like old scars. Paul’s also around, busy charming the knickers off some pretty American actress with a joint between his fingers._ _

__George looks up, and the sky is orange. A tangerine sunset, like one big, all-consuming blaze, like fire across the sky. It knocks the breath out of him. There is light, and then ache, and a gasp that comes from somewhere deep inside, wretchedly reaching for air and finding none._ _

__He thinks he’s dying. He’s sure he’s dying. He says as much, throat closing, and John crawls over to him with an odd look, swirls of purple around his mouth, babbling, “What? George, what?”_ _

__His fingers dig into earth, breath quickening, soul slipping—he is afraid. “I’m dying. Does my mother know?”_ _

__Peter Fonda is there, sits himself down beside George. He’s dropped too, and had been talking to John, before. He looks different here than he does on the television screen. He says it’s alright, that George should relax, that he knows what it’s like to be dead; that, when he was a kid, he’d accidentally shot himself in the stomach and flatlined three times on the operating table. George pictures bullets and blood, the anguish of a blameless child, and starts to cry._ _

__John pulls him in, covers George’s ears for him, petulant and juvenile. He yowls, “We don’t wanna hear it, man! We don’t wanna hear it!”_ _

__Paul emerges, then, a blur across his vision. He tries to get George to stand, murmuring, “Up, it’s alright, c’mon,” hands along his shoulders. He can’t possibly understand what’s going on, doesn’t ask beyond what John and Peter tell him, but ushers him out and away to a secluded room upstairs, pays no mind to the few that stare as they go._ _

__Sirens wail. Satin bedsheets dip beneath him. Paul’s hand drags across his damp forehead, carving soft roads, and George cries for knowing death means he’ll never feel him again._ _

__The next morning, after it’s all over, Paul’s eyes are wide and haunted, and he’s squeezing George’s hand like if he lets go they’ll lose him again, and he says to them both, “I don’t know how either of you get on like that.”_ _

__But he does, really, because sometime in December, Paul drops with fucking Tara Browne._ _

“Why _him_?” John had pressed, in the smoldering aftermath of a blowout row they’d all regret in the morning. “Why?”

__Maddeningly, Paul has no real answer for them. “It’s only the way things went,” and he seems so starless, distant, “There’s nothing more I could tell either of you.”_ _

George thinks he’s done it out of spite. Even after the incident in LA, he and John take it once or twice more, still looking to find more pieces to the mind puzzle; Paul doesn’t understand them, and soon enough it begins to feel like he’s _choosing_ not to. After all the pressure they’ve applied, it’s like he takes it with Tara and his crew so as not to give either one of them the satisfaction. That’s where the friction lies.

It carries into the studio as they begin work on _Sergeant Pepper_ , and in its midst their world tilts on its axis—the mop-tops start growing out, John starts wearing his teashade glasses regularly (as if he now thinks there’s more worth seeing), and their sound gets richer, wilder.

__The same can’t be said of how they start to treat each other._ _

Paul pulls one way, John pulls another, George pulls and ends up nearest to John—The Beatles, as it is, seems a burgeoning discontentment in their lives, so suddenly unimportant against the backdrop of everything else they’ve found an interest in. But Paul thinks they’re better than they’ve ever been as a band, _getting better all the time_. And some part of him, equal parts territorial and perfectionist, seems to specialize exclusively in tearing the shit out of George’s songs.

He’s not Lennon-McCartney, he knows that much. Both Paul and John’s egos have ensured that that’s the one coterie he’s not allowed to touch. But he’s got _something_. The acid has opened him up. He knows he’s gotten better than he was, and there are things he wants to say. And that Paul (and John, to a lesser extent) can so readily dictate the worth of his music digs deep into him, little by little. They’ve always agreed that what they have together is entirely separate from what they do in the studio, but with everything that’s come between the three of them, that line withers away. They never have been very good with borders.

__“Bit run of the mill, isn’t it?” Paul had said once, after George had played one of his half-formed tunes to him. He’d spoke it like an afterthought, like his little song hadn’t even managed to breach the bounds of his interest._ _

__“Were you even listening?” George hissed._ _

__Paul blinked. “I always listen.”_ _

__“No, you don’t.”_ _

__“Who does, then?” Egging him on, picking at the scab._ _

__“John does,” he’d snapped, though it wasn’t entirely true, “John listens.”_ _

__He supposes this is the moment that fractures them irreparably—the moment they start weaponizing each other’s names._ _

__Paul, wounded in his quiet way. His voice small, but unmistakably grim, “Right. Course he does.”_ _

__And so begins the end._ _

__**XIII. Now**  
“I want a divorce,” John tells them, and it’s just as much a lash as it is a surrender._ _

__Klein’s there with his funny papers, which they’ve all gone and signed—Paul scowls the whole way through, only plasters on a tepid smile when the cameras come out. He looks hard at John, now, pale and slack-jawed._ _

__“Don’t tell,” Klein hisses._ _

__George’s whole being bubbles with a strange mix of dread and euphoria, the same awful relief of the last war cry ringing out, the last man falling. It feels like an end to their bullshit, their games—John’s finally gone and said something real. Pain and release._ _

__“Go on, then,” George pushes darkly. The reproachful look Ringo gives him burns hot at his side._ _

__Obediently, John barrels on, “The group’s over. I’m leaving.”_ _

__Paul studies him, expression fastidious and flat, “That all?”_ _

__Yoko stands behind John like a shadowy sentinel, and says for him, “Yes. That’s all.”_ _

__Something snaps between them. The lull before the tidal wave. George senses it like another presence._ _

__Paul says tightly, “Right, well, you shouldn’t tell the press. Shouldn’t make an event of it before the album’s released.”_ _

__“Is that all you’ve got to say?” John demands, “You’re worried about the fucking journalists?”_ _

__“Well, nothing really happened if you’re not going to say anything.”_ _

__“Boys,” Klein begins, looking to placate, offering up advisements of the proper American businessman with words they trust but don’t really comprehend; Paul cuts him off with an unforgiving, “I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that.”_ _

And John sounds so _tired_ , fed up. “I don’t understand you.” He looks to George, lingers, then to Ringo, “Any of you.”

__Paul begins some sigh of a response but John’s words stomp over his like spirit-shocks, seething electricity, tearing out every page of their book: “I don't want to hold your hand anymore, Paul.”_ _

__And so it goes; the tidal wave crashes down. George holds his breath. Paul seems suspended in time as it all comes over him, and his gaze remains fixed to John, like he’s the only other person in the room._ _

His lip starts to wobble. George thinks he imagines it, there’s no way, there’s no way—but then there _is_ , because then there are tears, slipping down in an instant, glistening like strung pearls, and Paul is _crying_. For them. For John.

__He’s so silent with it that everyone else in the room stops dead—there’s a brief pause like despair. Paul’s face grows ruddy red, and he looks mortified, exposed as he is, but his eyes never leave John’s, not as they pool and glisten and spill, not as his mouth presses into a taut line to swallow a sob._ _

__John watches him with something like grief._ _

__“It’s only me, Macca,” he murmurs, brows furrowed like he can’t figure it out, “It’s only me.”_ _

__Yoko’s hand comes up to trace the arc of his cheek, guiding him to look away, her eyes locking with his instead. She whispers something to him, and his posture slackens, and George suddenly understands what it is between them. What he’s asked her to protect him from._ _

__Mal’s the one to move, braver and better than the rest of them, wraps an arm around Paul’s shoulders and guides his quivering form swiftly toward the door._ _

__They pass George on the way, close enough to touch. “Paul,” he tries to say, but it’s barely a whisper, barely a word, and Paul doesn’t hear him. His gut tumbles as Mal says something gruff about driving him home, slamming the door shut behind them._ _

__George sinks into a nearby armchair and yanks out his pack of cigs, helpless under the tremor of his fingers._ _

**XIV. Then**  
1967 is an earthquake of a year, and it cracks them all wide open. _Sergeant Pepper_ is released, and suddenly they’re no longer boys, but artists, instruments of popular invention. John meets Yoko—there’s a growing pile of letters tucked inside his bedside drawer that George chooses not to ask about; if Paul notices, he doesn’t say anything either. It’s the year they all go looking for meaning in Maharishi and meditation. It’s also the year that Brian dies.

__They’re told little more than the fact that he’d been found in his home, when the news comes through. None of them know what to do with it. They’re in Wales, of all places, for another of Maharishi’s lectures. They don’t stay long, after they hear, though Paul’s on his lonely way back to London before the rest of them, pallid and dazed. George can’t blame him for looking to get away, but he also knows that just a year or two ago they’d have all sought to grieve together._ _

__He, Ringo, and John are left to handle the bloodhounds of the press outside, and they give as many withdrawn, perfunctory answers as they can bear._ _

__No, we’ve no plans for the future, we’ve only just heard the news._ _

__Yes, Brian was a beautiful fellow._ _

__Yes, he was one of us._ _

__No, we don’t know what to say._ _

__We can’t pay tribute in words._ _

__John breaks down as soon as they pile into the backseat of their car, tremulous gasps of breath as he buries his face in his hands and tries to pull it together. Ringo mumbles mellow comforts, fingers curled soothingly around his bicep, and George can’t manage anything more than to press his forehead into the curve of John’s shoulder, shut his eyes, and pray._ _

__As tides roll on and 1968 begins, they go looking for healing in Rishikesh. John and George are interested in burning bridges, being found and awoken; Ringo’s drawn in at the hand of Maharishi’s laughter, and the wonder of his stories; Paul goes to learn, to devour, to revel in the novelty of it all. They are, each of them, searching, needing, but it is through this lens they realize all they cannot understand in one another._ _

__There is undeniable goodness—days of sun-sticky afternoon lectures, the ease of long hair and loose clothing, mind-soaring meditation, music-making at their leisure. There are blessed nights of closeness and contact, George’s heart forever pounding under John’s candlelit smile, the hunger of his hands, and Paul’s sweet words, the sureness of his mouth. It’s not home, but nearly._ _

__Just as they are being taught, however, all things persist in balance. Alongside the light, a festering darkness builds within their body of trust._ _

__John wakes early each morning, slips out of bed in the pale blue before sunrise, and goes off to fetch the post on the sly. Some mornings he returns from the office with nothing, but it’s just as often he returns with postcards or letters signed by a four-letter name his fingers trace with baffling reverence._ _

__George and Paul pretend to sleep through his odd morning ritual, perhaps soothed by the knowledge that John has always returned to them, and that his bouts of drifting out of orbit never last terribly long. The unspoken way of things is to slough it off until it goes away. But the thing about this, about Yoko, is that it doesn’t. It becomes harder and harder to set aside. Harder to forgive._ _

__John’s just left, again, and his space in the sheets has grown cold. George’s eyes search the fissured wood of the bedroom door like it might explain everything to him. Paul’s touch skirts along his shoulder blades, though it’s all charm, no direction._ _

__George dares, “Doesn’t it bother you?”_ _

__“Hm?”_ _

__“His sneakin’ around.” Playing with fire, he is, speaking it into existence like this._ _

__“It does,” Paul sighs, “But it’s John, y’know.”_ _

__“That doesn’t mean anything,” George rolls over to look at him properly, “You wouldn’t stand it from anyone else.”_ _

__“Nothing’s even happened,” Paul’s gaze is placid as ever, “It’s jus’ some naff letters. I don’t believe it’s anything to get worked up about.”_ _

__George huffs, “Believe what you will.” He’s got no fight left in him. Not for this._ _

__Days later, he and John wander down to the banks of the River Ganges. The water is a sparkling blend of blue and green, and the sunset is a hot orange, like George remembers it being in LA. John is quiet as they go—he speaks much less these days, plays his role as the thoughtful, dutiful student. George watches as he wades into the shallow of the river, soaks the hems of his trousers._ _

__“Fancy a swim?”_ _

__“A dive, more like,” John laughs, “Dive so deep I’d never ‘ave to come out again.”_ _

__George sticks his toes into the water experimentally, hissing as a chill races up his leg. “Mad bastard. S’ baltic in there.”_ _

__John says wickedly, “Be warmer if you joined.”_ _

__“That’s not very spiritual of you, student Lennon,” George grins wryly, no sooner than John turns to yank him close. The water jumps around their ankles with the movement, freezing licks sloshing along their calves._ _

__“Christ,” he shivers, and John’s lips come down to claim his words and breath. The kiss is tinged with something heavy, the weight of everything he won’t tell. Something in George’s chest throbs woefully._ _

__He pulls away before he can sink into it, murmurs, “You’ve not been honest.”_ _

__There’s an awful, dangling silence. Grim understanding settles over John’s face. “Talking about it now, are we? Thought you’d both go on pretending.”_ _

__“Who is she? Yoko?” George warns him, “Don’t lie, John.”_ _

__John studies him carefully. Something in him softens at the mention of her name. “She’s a friend. An artist. I don’t have to be anyone for her but myself.”_ _

“You’re _daft_. What, some sort of prison with us, is it?”

__“Oh, fuck off.”_ _

__George turns away from John’s biting stare, steps back onto the bank. Dust and sand stick to his wet feet._ _

__“She’s yours, then?” he asks lowly, “She’s who you want, now?”_ _

__“It’s not as simple as all that. She’s jus’ different, I can’t explain it.”_ _

__Bitterness settles along George’s tongue. “You don’t need to.”_ _

__“George,” John pleads, suddenly tame at his side, “You’ve got to know this is bigger than all of us. We’ve got to change. I have to. We’ll kill each other otherwise. Can’t you see?”_ _

__And here again, the ridiculous notion that their fate is something whirling wildly out of their hands—just exactly why they can’t ever make any bloody decision for themselves. Paul bends to it too, and George hates this part of them both._ _

__He supposes he understands, in some uncomfortable way, John’s need to run. The allure of being what you haven’t been for someone new. Like marriage, like art, change becomes._ _

__Nevertheless, this is an undoing._ _

His heart dips as he speaks, gaze prickling, and it’s all so _ridiculous_ , “Cleared the board, you have. That’s us at an end.”

__John grasps at his hand, and it’s an empty, faraway thing, “Door’s open, you know. She’d like you.”_ _

__George thinks of it; of the strange world of avant-garde he’d fall into, John’s familiarities coupled with the touch of a woman he can only imagine the shadows of. Smokescreens, smeared ink, chasing something with no end._ _

__“I think I’d hate it.”_ _

__John’s smile is pinched, “Right you are.”_ _

__They walk the path back to the ashram together without a word, pouring with empty promises._ _

__George finds Paul sat at the edge of one of their beds, the following night, frighteningly still. The door creaks with his return—smoke sticks to the roof of his mouth, the remains of the fire they’d sat and sang for hours around. When Paul looks up at him, there’s misery around his eyes, and a stiffness in the line of his shoulders._ _

__John’s come by, then. Likely delivered his piece._ _

“You _knew_ ,” Paul says, like it’s a dirty word.

__George takes a breath. “So did you.”_ _

__They’re not rightly themselves, here in India, but even so, they’ve been on this path longer than Paul would like to admit. He understood as well as George did that they were losing John, losing each other._ _

__“I didn’t—not that he’d go. Not that.”_ _

__“What’s he said to you?”_ _

__“Everything, nothing,” Paul goes on like he’s half awake, “Something that didn’t happen.”_ _

__It’s cryptic and infuriating. George is left unknowing and abandoned, like always, with an outsider’s ear to John and Paul’s eerie, impossible twin-speak. The essence of everything that’s brought them to this point. That despite how they started, Paul has never put George and John on equal footing, has never allowed the three of them to be anything unfolding or unpredictable. That Paul has never seen George the blindingly cosmic way he sees John. That perhaps it's possible to love someone for too long._ _

__“You’re fucking unbelievable,” George sees red, “Why can’t you ever speak to me like I’m a person?”_ _

__“Because I know you better,” Paul snaps, on the cusp of a sob or a shout, and it’s perfectly unhelpful, perfectly painful._ _

“You don’t know _anything_.”

__George leaves the room before Paul can give another ghostly nonanswer, wanders away into night-shaded jungle, follows the pinholes in the sky. With his back flush against a tree trunk, he tells himself he’s had it._ _

__**XV. Now**  
Driving down to Paul’s home on Cavendish, George finds, isn’t nearly as agonizing as it is to convince himself to step out of the car._ _

__He sits for ages behind the wheel, stomach lurching every time he spares a glance at Paul’s great big front gate, the cold wood and brass of it. They’ve not been able to reach him for days, since signing the papers with Klein, left only with a series of unanswered phone calls._ _

__Of course, nobody’s asked George to go around, or to try smoothing things over. All things considered, he’s probably one of the worst for the job—and he supposes there isn’t much to smooth over, anyway, seeing as John’s called things with the band at an end. The roof’s already caved in; what’s left is the mess. And Paul’s tears have haunted him since._ _

__He isn’t sure what he’s looking for in coming here. Some simple indication that Paul’s alive, maybe, or that he’s still got his wits about him, enough to carry him forward through the heartache. George is most afraid of encountering some horrible specter of despair, a crumbling version of Paul that’s come unglued one too many times. He needs to know he can weather this storm, despite its breadth._ _

__George shuts his car door with a grimace, the thud of it seeming far too loud for the hush of the evening. He steels himself as the heels of his boots click down the street, feet dragging once he reaches the gate, looking down at the buzzer like a bridge to the unknown._ _

__He remembers how easy it used to be to waltz up to the McCartneys’ place on Forthlin; kettle always on the boil, music behind the door. Safe as his own home. They’ve come so far, George thinks, and yet can’t help feeling as though they’ve taken all the wrong roads to get here._ _

__His finger vibrates as it comes down on the buzzer._ _

__“Paul? It’s me,” his voice slips toward the speaker, “It’s George.”_ _

__There isn’t an answer. The forbidding gate stays shut, and the autumn wind blows past. He waits a minute, then two. Nothing shivers but the leaves._ _

__Another slow tick flows by. He figures it’s clear no one’s coming. He almost pushes the buzzer once more, recognizing distantly that he’s somehow not ready to let this go, to leave such a coldness behind. But something in him can’t manage it— _pride, fear, pain_ —so he settles stiffly on shoving his hands back into his pockets._ _

__Just as soon as he turns to begin his walk back to the car, something creaks._ _

__He swings around and one of the gate doors is moving, pulling backward, and Paul is there in the gap, looking soft and lousy in some loose house clothes, cheeks and nose a mottled red. His pupils glisten as they come to study George._ _

__“What d’you want?”_ _

__George swallows, takes in the miserable sight of him, stunned by the rolling wave of regret within himself. “To… jus’ to see you, is all.”_ _

__Paul’s lip twists. “See me?”_ _

__“Speak with you, even,” George adds, in good part, “Whatever way you’ll have me.”_ _

__Paul’s lip twists again, though this time it’s more of a wrinkle, fairer, fonder._ _

__“S’pose you’d better come in.”_ _

__George does; Paul leads him inside just as the sky shifts from purple to deep blue, as the stars begin to blink alive above them. The both of them settle clumsily on the green velvet settee in the front room, tucked into opposite, cushioned corners, same as they used to as lads. George notices an odd bit of dust gathered atop the piano nearby. Paul offers him a cuppa. He declines, despite knowing his hands are itching for a distraction. Something fragile claims the air._ _

__“We’ve been trying to ring you,” George says._ _

__Paul offers a small shrug, “I know.”_ _

__“I’ve never seen you like that, you know.”_ _

__That seems to surprise Paul. “Back at Apple, you mean? It was—I sort of… it was John, and I figure something jus’ sort of gave. Went to pieces. Shock, I think.”_ _

__George hums, almost studious. “You still love him.”_ _

__“Of course I do,” Paul murmurs, “Don't you?”_ _

__He nods feebly. Loving John is phantom pains and fractured memories. It never goes away._ _

__“Is that why you’ve come, then?” Paul inclines his head, “I’m alright, now. Or better than I was, rather.”_ _

Something thrashes in from the back of George’s mind. Age-old fear. Answers he wants but isn’t sure he’ll take. This seems a selfish moment for it, and he disregards the urge to voice it. _Nothing left worth fixing_ , he reminds himself, _it doesn’t matter_.

__“Yeah, that was the whole of it,” he says, feeling foolish to have come all this way, “Glad you’re fine, really.”_ _

__Paul’s gaze is questioning, searching deeply, a burning spotlight. “You’re not telling me something.”_ _

__George startles, then scowls. “Didn’t come to be picked at.”_ _

“That isn’t what I—” Paul huffs, “We’re long past the point of hiding all our ugly parts, don’t you think? You go on so angry with me all the time, and I hardly ever know what I’ve done, though I’m sure it’s _something_ , or you wouldn’t hate me so much.”

__That stirs his heart. “I don’t hate you.”_ _

__“Then what is it?”_ _

“I don’t _know_ you,” George feels the overflow building, “That’s the problem, Paul, we don’t know each other anymore. And all that shit in India put it right in front of us, and you wouldn’t listen to me, and I never, ever knew if I was only second—if it was jus’ John…”

__Paul’s lips part slightly, bewilderment in his brow. “John? It’s never been jus’ him. It was you first, wasn’t it?”_ _

__“That isn’t what I’m saying,” George’s breath comes short._ _

__“You’re asking if it was for you, too?” Paul leans forward from his corner of the settee, and George falls easily, as ever, into the rapture of his eyes, “If I still feel it for you? Yes, George. All of it,” he sounds in disbelief, “Carried it with me since we were kids.”_ _

_Love_ , Paul is saying. _I love you and it hasn’t gone away, not a second since we started_.

__George trembles with it. “How could I have known that? When you refuse to look at me as if I’ve grown, and act as if I’ve nothing to offer the fucking band that you couldn’t manage without, and go stirring me up jus’ to leave me with me own rotten thoughts? How’m I meant to understand that?”_ _

Paul looks _devastated_. “Christ, I lost you,” and his palm finds George's cheek in a desperate grasp, “In all of this, didn't I? Ages ago.”

“I'm right here,” George chokes out, and it's too late before he can stop the tears slipping, angry, exhausted relief, like strings have been cut, “I've _always_ been right here. You stopped seeing me.”

__And it’s borderline comical, he knows, to have come here looking to give comfort and to now be the one falling apart under someone else’s hands. But Paul’s touch is insistent, and his rosebud lips find jaw, cheek, and mouth—and it's good, it's good like it hasn't been for so long, like coming home and leaving it all at once._ _

It’s an apology enough; an acknowledgement of heartbreak, a release from silence. Paul’s kisses move to map the hollow of his throat, his fingers knotted in coffee-colored curls, and it’s a barely mouthed, “ _Could I?”_ before George meets him with a _yes_ , an _always_ , a “ _Please_.”

They fall into familiarity. Paul leads him upstairs, splays him out and tangles their hands and legs together between sinking sheets, and George gives as good as he gets, promising and feeling and utterly unmerciful. They rock together in some heavy, flying rhythm of allowing, until all they can ask of each other is “ _more_ ,” until the rest of the world seems some terrible intrusion on the kindness of skin and lamplight, of connection and deliverance.

__Paul’s name is in his blood, and he is never warmer._ _

__**XVI. Sunrise**  
The bed is empty when he wakes._ _

__Sorrow meets him first; then bitter ire. Some part of him screams that he shouldn’t have expected more—_ _

__Every bit of it dissipates as he rolls over to find Paul, fortunately present. His back is turned where he stands by the dresser, concentrating all too hard on pulling his trousers on slowly and silently, as if something will bite him if he makes too sudden a move. George barely swallows a laugh._ _

__“What are you doing?”_ _

__Paul jolts, turning quickly to face him, looking sheepish. “I thought…”_ _

__George rolls his eyes. “Well, stop thinkin’ and come to bed.”_ _

__Wordlessly, Paul obeys, looking strangely relieved as he forgoes his bizarre dressing operation and climbs back under the covers. Paul’s arm returns to wind around him, a comfort George easily leans into._ _

__“Planning to leave, were you?”_ _

__“Thought I’d give you space,” Paul explains gently, teeming with some uncertainty bigger than them both._ _

__“Let me decide those things for meself,” George sighs, “Don’t go on assuming the worst of me.”_ _

__Paul’s answering kiss lands just along his shoulder, a warm affirmation. Certainly, they have work to do, and parts of each other to relearn._ _

__It’s a raw thing, the closeness, and undeniably incomplete, a hole that leaves them empty where John once settled. But for now, there is softness at dawn. And here, laid content in the stretch of one another, peace comes easy._ _

**Author's Note:**

> as always, i love hearing from y'all! comments and feedback are deeply appreciated. you can also find me on tumblr at [honeyheffron](https://honeyheffron.tumblr.com/)! big love to you, i hope you've been staying safe <3
> 
>  **FUN (?) FACTS:**  
>  According to Michael Lindsay-Hogg (director of the Let It Be film), the group getting cold feet before the famous rooftop concert was a real thing, and John was of course the one to say "Fuck it," and get everybody out there. It's mentioned here in this Rolling Stone [article](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beatles-famous-rooftop-concert-15-things-you-didnt-know-58342/), among some other cool facts about the concert.
> 
> Paul's "I thought until this album that George's songs weren't that good" is a direct quote from him. Ringo was indeed away in hospital for some intestinal complication, and in his absence, the rest of the band said some nasty things to each other during a meeting at Apple, all on tape. Historically, Paul was talking about George's songs on Abbey Road, but for timeline purposes within the fic, he's talking about his stuff on Let It Be. There's a great article about it [here](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/11/the-beatles-break-up-mark-lewisohn-abbey-road-hornsey-road).
> 
> George did apparently have a bad acid trip at Zsa Zsa Gabor's home in LA. This was the impetus for Peter Fonda's famous line, "I know what it's like to be dead," which would later inspire John to write "She Said She Said." More about that incident and how LSD influenced the Revolver era [here](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/beatles-acid-test-how-lsd-opened-the-door-to-revolver-251417/).
> 
> Famously, John did announce he was leaving The Beatles just as the group was signing their new contract with Allen Klein. George was not actually present at this meeting, however, as he was visiting his mother in Cheshire, who was very sick at the time. John, Paul, and Ringo remember the incident [here](https://www.beatlesbible.com/1969/09/20/john-lennon-reveals-he-is-leaving-the-beatles/), and roadie Mal Evans discusses Paul's subsequent breakdown [here](https://amoralto.tumblr.com/post/47542201145/november-29th-1975-beatles-roadie-mal-evans).


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